Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD: On 29 February I participated in a debate organised by Lex Fridman on Israel and Palestine, alongside Norman Finkelstein, Benny Morris, and Steven Bonnell (stage name “Destiny”).

Apart from reposting a link to the recording of the event, I’ve thus far refrained from comment.

I’ve done so on the grounds that people interested in the discussion and prepared to endure a five-hour video can watch it themselves and make up their own minds about the various issues discussed, rather than being told what to think by a participant.

Bonnell has taken a decidedly different approach. In addition to multiple hours-long podcasts broadcast before the event, he began relitigating the discussion from virtually the moment it ended.

Taking to Twitter/X and YouTube, he immediately began promoting his own version of events, including in podcasts, issued prior to the debate’s 14 March release, that were significantly longer than the debate itself.

Much of Bonnell’s commentary consisted of juvenile name-calling, insults, and distortions directed primarily at Norman Finkelstein.

Bonnell’s obsession with Finkelstein, and his fixation with convincing viewers he acquitted himself with distinction in his exchanges with Finkelstein before these were publicly available, speaks for itself.

As does his repeatedly expressed view that nothing of substance was uttered during the debate and watching it a waste of time. (Bonnell also lamented that he missed a "gang bang" to participate in the debate.)

As for my own contribution, Bonnell appeared to take particular exception to an observation of mine regarding a statement he made regarding apartheid in one of his pre-event podcasts.

During that particular podcast, Bonnell stated that he doubted either Finkelstein or I would be watching. In fact, and since I hadn’t previously heard of Bonnell,

had not previously come across anything he has published on the Middle East (he apparently hasn’t), and was entirely unacquainted with his views, I made it a point to watch.

Full disclosure: I was at the time unaware that Bonnell had in previous podcasts identified himself as “pro-genocide” with respect to Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians.

Or that among other displays of familiarity with the region he couldn’t identify Bashar Assad, thought Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the president of Israel, and was apparently unable to locate his favorite MENA state on a map.

In any event, during the pre-debate podcast in question Bonnell was explaining to his audience how he would dispense with the finding that Israel is an apartheid state.

Purportedly basing his views on the legal definition of apartheid (“separateness”), Bonnell asserted that Jim Crow did not constitute apartheid, but that Arab states that have not extended citizenship to Palestinian refugees in their territory is a clear example of this crime.

I recounted this statement to Bonnell during the debate (at 4:45:59). Once again claiming to base himself on the legal definition of apartheid, Bonnell changed his position somewhat, this time to “I don’t know if Jim Crow would have qualified for apartheid”.

For good measure he added, “just like if Israel were to literally nuke the Gaza Strip and kill two million people, I don’t know if that would qualify for the crime of genocide”.

It remains unclear why the legal definition of apartheid leaves Bonnell clueless about the status of Jim Crow but sufficiently confident to indict Arab states.

After all, Jim Crow was a formal system of rigidly enforced segregation in the United States imposed by state authority, enforced by legislation and violence, and confirmed by the US Supreme Court.

By contrast, Arab states were at worst exercising a universally-recognized sovereign right to not extend collective citizenship to foreign refugees on their territory. Rather than clarify his position, he quickly changed the subject to Israeli civilian casualties on 7 October.

Perhaps Bonnell thinks there is a state named Arabia that is withholding citizenship from its Palestinian minority, or simply doesn’t know – or care to know - how apartheid operated in his own country.

What is certain is that he is entirely unaware that Jim Crow served as a model and inspiration for the South African white-minority regime’s racist policies, which bequeathed us the term and crime of apartheid.

In his post-debate podcasts the above exchange metamorphosed into my “playing the race card” and the like. In fact, I had merely restated his own words, verbatim, seeking an explanation for his rather unorthodox understanding and misunderstanding of what constitutes apartheid.

But the above incident was trivial compared to Bonnell’s multiple victory laps concerning the use of two Latin legal terms, “mens rea” and “dolus specialis”,

with respect to South Africa’s 29 December 2023 application to the International Court of Justice instituting proceedings against Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

I’ll start by reproducing the relevant exchange:

STEVEN BONNELL (03:17:58): I don’t know if you used the phrase “dolus specialis”, that’s the intentional part of genocide-

MOUIN RABBANI: I don’t know that term.

STEVEN BONNELL: I think it’s called “dolus specialis”, it’s the most important part of genocide, which is proving it is a highly special intent to commit genocide. It’s possible that Israel could-

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: That’s “mens rea”.

STEVEN BONNELL: Yes, I understand the state of mind, but for genocide, it’s called “dolus specialis”. It’s a highly special intent. Did you read the case?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah.

STEVEN BONNELL: It is a highly special intent [inaudible].

This was not the first time Bonnell that day questioned whether Finkelstein, arguably the world’s foremost forensic scholar, a voracious reader, and someone who has on multiple occasions discussed the relevant text in detail, had read the document in question.

(Regarding my own ignorance of “dolus specialis” and for that matter “mens rea”, I know neither Latin nor legalese,

and when confronted with such terms resort to a search engine to look up their translation into a language I understand, and typically consign the original to the memory hole).

Briefly, and to the best of my understanding, “mens rea” denotes criminal intent, and “dolus specialis” specific intent. “Dolus specialis” is, in other words, a subcategory of “mens rea”.

What is at issue in this specific instance is that in its application to the ICJ, South Africa references “dolus specialis” four times, but “mens rea” not once.

As far as Bonnell was concerned this means not only that it is “dolus specialis” rather than “mens rea” that is required to demonstrate the intent to commit genocide, but also that Finkelstein had not read the document in question.

For the record, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa and Israel’s oral arguments before the ICJ on 11-12 January 2024, the Court’s Order (initial ruling) of 26 January,

and for that matter the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) mention neither Latin term, and speak only of “intent”.

Bonnell appears to have taken too many victory laps for his own good. His continued juvenile taunting of Finkelstein on 21 March elicited a response from the latter entitled “Moron Specialis”. According to Finkelstein:

“MENS REA (criminal intent, from the Latin for “guilty mind”) denotes the legal principle at stake while DOLUS SPECIALIS (criminal intent to commit genocide) denotes one application of it. Here is an example of this usage from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:”

Chapter and verse are duly provided by Finkelstein. Concluding his remarks he asks: “Did these distinguished judges err by referring to mens rea and not dolus specialis?

I was stating the obvious that the critical point of contention in a genocide case is proving criminal INTENT ('That’s mens rea'), and of course everyone in the room understood that the threshold under the Genocide Convention is proving criminal INTENT to commit genocide.”

Given that Finkelstein has a vested interest in the matter, I thought it would make sense to get an independent opinion, and approached an international lawyer who has participated in cases before the ICJ unrelated to Palestine for clarification.

Here is the international lawyer’s response:

“In the crime of genocide, both mens rea and dolus specialis are essential elements that must be proven to establish criminal liability. Mens rea refers to the mental state of the perpetrator when committing the acts that constitute genocide.

The perpetrator must have the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such, which can be inferred from the actions, statements, and policies of the perpetrator.

Dolus specialis is particularly relevant in proving the intentionality behind the commission of genocide. It requires demonstrating that the perpetrator had the specific intent to commit the acts that constitute the crime of genocide.

Both mens rea and dolus specialis are necessary elements to establish criminal liability for genocide. Prosecutors must demonstrate that the perpetrator had not only the general intent to commit the underlying acts,

but also possessed the specific intent to destroy a particular group, as required by the definition of genocide.”

More recently we have the following from “Anatomy of a Genocide”, the 22 March 2024 report issued by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967:

“[T]he crime of genocide comprises two interconnected elements:

(a)    The actus reus: the commission of any one or more specific acts against a protected group [these are enumerated]

(b)    The mens rea: the intent behind the commission of one or more of the above-mentioned acts that must be established, which includes two intertwined elements:

(i)    a general intention to carry out the criminal acts (dolus generalis), and

(ii)    a specific intention to destroy the target group as such (dolus specialis).”

In other words, dolus specialis is a subdivision of the legal threshold called mens rea, exactly as Finkelstein stated.

As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. END